Windswept by Adam Rakunas Page A

(“And so say all of us, and so say all of us, for she’s a bloody great Union...”); everything in the front of my brain said I could strangle Bloombeck and get away with it. Your Honor, this piece of shit completely overstepped his bounds, making business decisions like this, especially when this was only supposed to cost me a lousy one hundred fifty yuan...
    Papa Wemba caught my eye, then pointed to the masses and tapped his wrist. Time was money. Of course it was.
    I left a still-blubbering Bloombeck on the sidewalk, waded through the crowd, then climbed on the hood of the truck. The band was drowned out by the roar of the crowd, a sound I would have welcomed and loved at any other time. All those people, they’d looked to me to help them out, and here I was, about to deliver.
    Except I couldn’t.
    I held up my hands, and everyone stilled. “Thank you–” I started, before someone yelled, “We love you, Padma!” and the cheering started again. One of the trumpets tooted away, and the band started up, and I yelled, at the tops of my lungs, “THERE AREN’T FORTY BREACHES!”
    It took me a few more tries before everyone got quiet, and I could feel the waves of love turning into something hot and ugly. “There are not forty Breaches,” I said, loud and clear.
    “Then how many are there?” said Jordan Blanton. As a LiaoCon architect, she had designed suborbital hanging gardens; now she’d been helping muck out the city’s sewage pipes for sixteen months. The stars on her cheeks started to look as hard as her eyes.
    I opened my mouth, about to say six , but then looked at everyone’s faces. Their good mood was gone, their faces growing hard as people remembered the shitty jobs they had and would continue to have while a few of their neighbors would luck out. Anything less than the forty Bloombeck had crowed about would give this mob an excuse to become a riot. Union people could put up with a lot of bullshit, but this would be too much.
    So, I took a deep breath. “Evanrute Saarien pinched them, so there are none,” I said, bracing myself for the first of many flung bottles.
    There was a moment of silence. Then the signs sagged, along with the faces. People shuffled away, heading into the bars and cafes. I jumped off the truck, and Jordan just shook her head. “Jordan, I tried,” I said.
    “I should’ve know this was all crap when I heard it from Bloombeck,” she said, her eyes getting a little damp. “But then you show up in this truck, and I thought, maybe it’s my turn. I can get someone to take my Slot, start designing again–”
    “You will,” I said.
    “Heard that one before,” said Jordan. “About sixteen months ago.” She gave me a little wave, then melted into the crowd.
    I opened the truck’s shotgun door. “Let’s go,” I said, climbing in.
    “You’re gonna mess up my seats,” said Papa Wemba.
    “Bill me,” I said, slamming the door behind me and waving up the road. “Drive.”
    It was a short hop to Reigert and Handel, and we slipped behind the Union satellite office, which took up all of an old shophouse. “I need to make a pickup here anyway,” said Papa Wemba as he stomped on the parking brake. “Wednesday night is AA at Our Lady, and that means a lot of coffee grounds.”
    “Glad we could provide,” I said, opening the door.
    “Hey,” said Papa Wemba, reaching over and touching my arm. “You got nothing to feel bad for, Padma. You’re gonna bring in new blood to the neighborhood, and people will remember that.”
    “Yeah,” I said, slipping out. “The problem is that only six people will remember. Thirty-four others will still be pissed at me.”
    I lifted the back flap, and the Breaches stared at me. “Can we get up from the pre-compost now?” asked Banks.
    “It’s garbage,” I said, opening the tailgate. “Only call it pre-compost when you need a favor.”
    I blinked my keycode to the back door and ushered everyone in. “Welcome to my backup